Archive for the 'Neutral Milk Hotel' Tag Under 'Soundcheck' Category

Beyoncé & Jay Z: Didn’t take long for this obvious but still titanic live pairing to go from rumor to reality. Sure enough, after less than a week of is-it-finally-happening? chatter, Monday morning Mr. and Mrs. Carter – almost inarguably the biggest stars in popular music, with 36 Grammys between them – announced their 16-stadium On the Run Tour.

It's yet another surefire sell-out in a summer packed with more massive-scale shows, many of them in August, than there have been in the better part of a decade.

Starting June 25 in Miami and wending their way to a West Coast finish Aug. 5 in San Francisco, Bey and Jay will make Los Angeles their penultimate stop with a Rose Bowl show set for Aug. 2. Tickets, $40.50-$251, go on sale at 10 a.m. Friday, May 2.

Sir Macca, too: In case you missed it last Friday when news broke, Paul McCartney – whose 2011-12 outing, coincidentally, was dubbed On the Run – is bringing his current Out There Tour west for a pair of significant California performances.

Of the 160-plus performers this past weekend who tried to summarize what remains so special about the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival, progressive hip-hop star Kid Cudi probably came the closest to encapsulating that certain feeling early Saturday evening, when he shut down the momentum of his man-alone, Kanye-like production and got reflective.

“People come to Coachella to find themselves,” he told his sprawl, “to look for some answers, feel the love. We are all human beings trying to figure this out.”

OK, maybe that’s overstating the sensation. I doubt many of the nearly 100,000 people who clogged the Empire Polo Field during this event’s party-hard, celeb-stuffed first weekend came to seek inner peace through the spectacles of Duck Sauce and Skrillex.

But the second edition of this year’s lineup seemed to attract realer patrons in pursuit of a more meaningful experience. Truer Coachellans, that is, the sort who schlep to Indio not simply to say they were there but to cull deeper feelings, maybe a hint of enlightenment and plenty of musical discovery from this endurance marathon.

UPDATE: Reviews of Lana Del Rey, the Naked and Famous, Motörhead and more. Click through this post for all of our Coachella day 3 coverage.

Coachella Sundays always start in mellow moods. We're all getting a tad tired after two long days of music, with too little sleep and too much of the desert's meteorological mood swings.

So what better way to start the day than with a bit of Poolside, a L.A.-based electro-pop band that describes its sound as “daytime disco.” I got to Mojave just as the band launched into their cover of Neil Young's “Harvest Moon,” as gentle of a tune as Neil has ever written, nicely adapted by Poolside to add a soft electronic groove beneath the melody.

There’s at least one thing most Coachella watchers will likely agree on: this 2014 lineup has no wow at all.

That’s a fairly bold statement to make, considering the opening-night main attraction for this year’s double-weekend spring festival in Indio is the first performance in more than a decade from OutKast. The celebrated hip-hop duo of Andre 3000 (above, center) and Big Boi largely disappeared from stages around the time their 2003 double-disc opus Speakerboxxx/The Love Below took home the Grammy for album of the year.

The other two headliners, Matthew Bellamy (left) and Muse in the middle and Win Butler (right) and Arcade Fire to close out the event, are hardly slouches – they’re among the most vibrant large-scale acts around. Plus, organizers at L.A. concert promoter Goldenvoice snagged the usual slew of rarities, from the long-awaited West Coast return of the Replacements and the desert debut of another important forebear, Bryan Ferry, to turns from Pet Shop Boys, the Afghan Whigs, Neutral Milk Hotel, even English punk novelty the Toy Dolls.

Certainly nothing to sniff at. But considering Arcade Fire’s booking was virtually a given (the Montreal band’s tour routing already revealed it was Indio-bound for the fourth time) and that the much-circulated rumor about OutKast’s reunion had all but been confirmed by Rolling Stone and the pair’s own Instagram photo, there isn’t really a big reveal in this roster that would cause many jaws to drop.

Saturday's main stage lineup, much like Friday's, had a strong vein of British artists, this time beginning with an early evening set from Kaiser Chiefs. The British rock quintet's '70s and '80s punk- and new wave-inspired music seemed to infuse Coachellans with positive energy, even if the's band's delivery was at times a bit snide.

"I'm sorry you didn't know the words," said frontman Ricky Wilson in a mock-pouty voice after blasting through "On the Run," a sharp, Devo-esque newer cut. "You'll know 'em next week ... if you come back."

Of course, the majority of onlookers who heard him will not make it back to Indio next weekend, so that comment could've been taken in bad taste. But if it was, people hardly showed it; even if the tunes were mostly unfamiliar, their general raucousness seemed to grip and pull in both dedicated fans and passersby like a musical tractor beam, whether it be sing-along worthy hits like "Ruby" or newer tracks.

Though the audience was well-packed in anticipation, Andrew Bird's following performance on the Outdoor stage had a similar drawing power - albeit with a more subtle, much prettier enchantment that lured and caught curious Coachellans with mystifying whistle-loops and whimsical yet soulful violins rather than ear-drum-pounding guitar riffs.

If you were lucky enough to snag a ticket for Sunday night's sold-out Troubadour show from Broken Bells -- a new collaboration between the Shins' wailer/guitarist James Mercer and ever-versatile producer/DJ Danger Mouse(real name: Brian Burton) -- you might be questioning what you actually saw, if you could make out anything at all.

For the duration of the 75-minute performance, the duo and their four-piece band were so poorly illuminated that even those with a front-and-center vantage point were craning necks and squinting to get a glimpse as the musicians powered through the 10 songs -- in sequential order -- from their just-released self-titled debut.

Yet, those fans who did cough up the bucks for the group's second L.A. gig (they played a surprise concert at the intimate Bootleg Theater last month) bounced around happily in the club's shadowy showroom, seeming to understand that hearing is believing -- maybe more so than seeing in the case of Broken Bells.

Although the set list was predictable and less-than-lively (if you've ever seen Mercer, above, perform with the Shins, you know it's rare for him to do much more than tap his foot when he plays), there was a sense that this show -- wrapping up a brief major-city promotional blitz that took also took the group to Paris, London and New York -- was merely part of a test-run before a full-blown (and, one hopes, properly lighted) tour.

The album itself is a clear-cut modern masterpiece that seamlessly layers Mercer's ambient rock ballads over Burton's bass-heavy electro-pop grooves. Throw in shades of vocal soul and string arrangements from the DJ's days with Gnarls Barkley, add equal parts of downbeat psychedelia from Beck's Modern Guilt (which Burton helmed) and MGMT's Oracular Spectacular, and you've got Broken Bells.